Boost Your Productivity with 20 Essential Linux Command‑Line Tools

1. ag: A recursive search tool faster than grep or ack.

2. tig: An interactive Git repository viewer that can replace the git command.

3. mycli: A MySQL client with syntax highlighting and command completion, similar to ipython, usable as a mysql replacement.

4. jq: JSON processor and formatter with syntax highlighting, an alternative to python -m json.tool.

5. shellcheck: A static analysis tool for shell scripts that detects syntax errors and bad practices.

6. yapf: Google’s Python code formatter supporting PEP8 and Google style.

7. mosh: A UDP‑based terminal connection tool that can replace ssh with more stable connections and automatic reconnection.

8. fzf: A fuzzy finder for the command line, enabling interactive, intelligent search and selection of files or content, especially useful with Ctrl‑R history search.

9. PathPicker (fpp): Automatically detects directories and files in command‑line output, offering interactive selection; useful with git.

git diff HEAD~8 --stat | fpp

10. htop: A more beautiful and convenient process monitor, replacing the traditional top command.

11. axel: A multi‑threaded download accelerator that can replace curl or wget.

axel -n 20 http://centos.ustc.edu.cn/centos/7/isos/x86_64/CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1511.iso

12. sz/rz: Interactive file transfer tools that simplify copying files across multiple jump hosts.

13. cloc: Code line counter that reports blank lines, comment lines, and language breakdown.

14. ccache: A fast compiler cache for C/C++ that speeds up repeated builds, especially useful for kernel compilation. gcc foo.c Replace with: ccache gcc foo.c 15. tmux: Terminal multiplexer that can replace screen and nohup.

16. neovim: A modern alternative to vim.

17. script / scriptreplay: Tools for recording and replaying terminal sessions. script -t 2>time.txt session.typescript Replay: scriptreplay -t time.txt session.typescript 18. you-get: A powerful media downloader supporting YouTube, Google+, Youku, Mango TV, Tencent Video, and more.

macOS clipboard utilities: cat test.sh | pbcopy Paste from clipboard: pbpaste macOS say command for text‑to‑speech in multiple languages and voices.

for i in `say -v '?' | cut -d ' ' -f 1`; do echo $i && say -v "$i" 'Hello World'; done

19. thefuck: Automatically corrects mistyped commands; e.g., typing aptget becomes apt-get, and repeated use can add missing sudo.

It also corrects git brnch to git branch and puthon to python.

20. tldr: A concise cheat‑sheet tool for commands, useful when you don’t want to read full man pages.

Example:

Using man tar shows the full manual; using tldr tar displays a short summary.